By John Irish
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A rise in Middle East hostilities makes it all the more urgent for regional and international stakeholders to define a new strategy to contain the increasingly well-armed Iran-backed Houthi rebels, Yemen’s vice-president said on Tuesday.
Yemen’s Houthis have been attacking shipping in the Red Sea in protest at Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, a war that threatens to spread across the Middle East, and are appearing to be even more emboldened, suggesting they may have acquired hypersonic missiles from Iran.
“We think that it’s the moment that we join all the stakeholders, local, regional, and also international, to come together to find a strategy, a new strategy to tackle them,” Aidarous al-Zubaidi, Yemen’s vice president and head of the Southern Transitional Council, told Reuters in an interview.
Zubaidi is at the United Nations General Assembly where he was due to hold talks with key actors including the United States and Britain, who have struck Houthi sites in Yemen aimed at reducing the group’s capabilities. Those efforts have had limited success.
The Houthi movement has expanded its targets in the Red Sea region to include U.S. ships and other military vessels from a Western-backed coalition aimed at ensuring safe passage for commercial ships crossing the Bab al-Mandab corridor, the narrow strait at the entrance to the Red Sea.
Zubaidi said the way in which the West, local and regional actors are coordinating is not enough to stifle the Houthis militarily or economically.
He could not confirm that Iran had provided hypersonic missiles, but said Tehran was using the Houthis as a sort of testing ground for its own military capabilities.
Hodeidah port was an easy gateway to smuggle equipment to the Houthis, he said.
The Houthi movement, which controls the most populous areas of Yemen after nearly a decade of war against the Western-backed and Saudi-led coalition, has emerged as a strong supporter of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in its war against Israel.
Zubaidi said the Houthi attacks on the Red Sea have frozen efforts to reach a peace deal in Yemen and he saw no prospect of peace talks in the near term.
“The international community or Britain and the United States are only working on the Red Sea so it’s important to join up all these approaches and have a comprehensive one that would be effective,” Zubaidi said.
“The outcome of this is to contain the Houthis.”
(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Howard Goller)
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